Voodoo Eyes Read Online Free Page A

abruptly distracted. The man across the street had disappeared, vanished without trace, as if he’d never been there.
    ‘Two nights ago?’ Max asked. ‘Why didn’t you call me as soon as you heard?’
    ‘Couldn’t. There’s some stuff going on we need to talk about. I’m at the gym right now. Can you get over here?’
    ‘I’m on my way.’

2
    Joe Liston was waiting outside the gym, dressed to the nines, as usual. Beige linen suit, white shirt, brown tie and gleaming brown leather shoes. He’d always taken great pride in his appearance, considering it a reflection of how seriously he took his job and the responsibilities that went with it. The Miami PD had long before dispensed with its jacket-and-tie dress code for detectives, after complaints that tropical heat and formal attire weren’t conducive to efficient policing. Most plainclothes cops now turned up to work as they would to a barbecue – in loud beach shirts, faded jeans and worn sneakers. Joe had reacted to this sartorial liberalisation by wearing three-piece suits instead of two.
    He was imposingly tall and thickset. His short-cropped hair was grey, where he still had it. His wife’s great cooking and ten years spent delegating from behind a desk showed on his round face and rounder belly. That didn’t bother him. He didn’t try to hide it or lose it. He’d turned sixty the previous year. At that age, he reasoned, a man was entitled to let himself go a little.
    Max parked his car close by and walked over.
    7th Avenue was absolutely quiet.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe. He held out his hand in condolence.
    ‘Thanks.’ Max had tried to focus on Eldon’s murder on the way over, but his mind kept returning to what had just happened in the hotel. And to the man in the street.
    Joe cut through the seal on the door and they went inside.
    Max hadn’t been to the gym in close to ten years, the last time he’d seen Eldon. He was shocked by the state of the place, its abject ruin – the collapsed ring, the hole in the roof, the debris, the rust, the stacked-up filth. The spot where so many young lives had been turned around was now a scrapheap.
    He’d heard about the gym closing down after Abe Watson died, and how Eldon had still been going there day after day, staying from dawn to dusk. Looking around and taking it all in, trying and failing to rebuild it from memory, Max understood just how broken up the old man must have felt. The gym had been his pride and joy, the cornerstone of everything he’d built; and he’d sat by and watched it all fall apart around him. For the very first time since Joe’s call, Max felt a needle of ragged grief pierce him. It took him by surprise.
    March 8, 1964. That’s when Eldon Burns had come into his life. It was here, by the door, where he was now standing, that they’d first spoken.
    Max had gone to the gym with his friend, Manny Gomez. He hadn’t wanted to be a fighter that day, or any other day before. The closest he’d come to boxing was seeing Muhammad Ali on the corner of 5th Street, signing autographs for a gaggle of black kids. He’d never seen a live fight, let alone watched one the whole way through on TV. He simply wasn’t interested. He’d just gone along to the gym for something to do.
    Yet once he’d followed Manny inside, a whole other world had opened up and swallowed him whole. Blacks, Latinos and a few whites of all ages and sizes. Industrious, busy, concentrated, intense, focused. Do-or-die ambitions. Dreams of glory and wealth. Broken noses, sliced-up brows, cauliflower ears. Hard faces, dripping wet. Trapped heat. The smell of sweat, blood, leather, rubbing alcohol. Choreographed violence. Punches thrown so fast hands blurred into a haze. The muffled poly-rhythm of fists on bags, rattling speedballs, the whirl and whip of a dozen jump ropes, the pit-a-pat of bouncing feet.
    Eldon Burns had stepped out of the middle of it all, its embodiment, its soul. A big guy in track pants and a